When I was very young, living in a suburb which had trains passing through it every day, I grew up with a boy named Tetsuo Takahata. We were the same age, and for nearly a decade we shared the same classes. Tetsuo, at first glance, did not have much going for him. For one, he didn't have a special name. It was common for there to be multiple boys named Tetsuo in any given classroom, sort of like how in American classrooms there would be a surplus of Tylers. There was also his appearance, which was not anything special, even after he had survived his bout with puberty. He had square shoulders and twig-like legs, but he had a round face. He was not the most handsome boy, nor did he have quirks that would've otherwise made him a memorable classmate. Still, I'd befriended him by the time we entered elementary school. From the time we were five years old to the beginning of high school, we would venture out every morning across a small wooden bridge that took us from our neighborhood to the school. We would say "good morning" to each other, and to a few of our classmates as well, including my sister, who was a year older than me. When stuck together, we would talk about Godzilla and Ultraman, and early on we even discovered that we both liked watching baseball whenever we got the chance to hog the TV at home. We talked about things boys talked about. Everything, in fact, except for girls we liked; or, depending on our age, how much we didn't like girls. We never admitted that phase of our adolescence with each other. I assumed, in my childish state of mind, that Tetsuo didn't want to be bothered about who he might have crushes on, and he might've thought the same way about me. As such, that part of our lives remained a mystery, something shared and yet mutually exclusive. Long before that, I had no interest in getting a girlfriend. I thought, in an innocent way, that I would rather have Tetsuo be my girlfriend than any of the girls in our class. But of course Tetsuo was a boy! Not that I considered it too deeply at that age. At the same time, why did I like him so much? I can't tell you too much about Tetsuo, except that I enjoyed being with him. It's usually a futile battle, anyhow, to explain to a third party why someone would strike anyone else as special without devolving into cliche. I could tell you that he had a fun-loving personality, but that would convey absolutely no meaning when compared to seeing said personality in action. I could tell you that him saying "good morning" to me on our way to school sent a small but substantial wave of comfort to my stomach, but I don't believe there is any meaning in saying this either. I myself tried to express to him how I felt, even though I could not have fully understood my own feelings at the age of ten. Despite this, I decided to write him a letter, something I could pass to him between classes, or perhaps on the way home from school, right before we would go our separate ways. I knew, regardless, that I didn't want to be present when he read it. So for one agonizing night I sat hunched over my desk, writing and re-writing what I wanted to tell him. Yet as I came closer to realizing my vision, the less confident I became in what I wanted to say. Still, I finished it and put the slip of paper in my backpack, but doubt still haunted me. I considered, on the day I was to hand my letter to Tetsuo, whether it was worth confessing such things to him, to put our friendship in jeopardy. I didn't think about it in those words, but I thought about it all the same. I didn't want to lose what I already possessed. Standing on that small wooden bridge from my childhood, I took my letter out of my backpack and started ripping it into little pieces. I took these pieces and threw them over the edge, into the water, where I wouldn't have to think about them anymore. Satisfied, if also weary, I went home and pushed Tetsuo out of my mind. From then on, he would be just another boy to me.